by Olga Rudenko, Special for USA TODAY

by Olga Rudenko, Special for USA TODAY

KIEV, Ukraine - Independence Square, the heart of the Ukrainian protest movement, looked very much Friday like an anthill.

Thousands of people were moving about the square and each person had a designated task.

Men in camouflage patrolled the area, heaped with burnt trash, taking shifts at barricades erected to keep out the police. With purses wedged under their arms, women in glossy boots swept up the ashes.

And then there were the protesters, who stood firm as they have for weeks.

"Am I scared to be here? Sometimes, maybe. Like everyone else. But what happens if everyone surrenders to fear? We must stand for changes," says Yevhen, shrugging his shoulders.

The square is a longtime symbol in Ukraine history of political expression that was renamed to commemorate the country's freedom from the Soviet Union and Russia in 1991. Protesters here asked that their full names not be used for fear of retribution from a regime that had police to gun down their comrades for refusing to leave a spot they have held for weeks in hopes of forcing the resignation of hated president Viktor Yanukovych.

Yevhen and his friend Ivan stood near a barricade at Institutska Street, where dozens of people were shot down Thursday. From a small town in western Ukraine, Ivan and Yevhen rushed to Kiev on Thursday night after they saw the bloodshed on the news.

Both held hand-carved wooden bats and wore camouflage outfits. Yevhen unbuttons his jacket to show how he had stuffed the pockets of his regular vest with plates of metal to repel the bullets of snipers. Dozens of bottles filled with gasoline stood in the boxes, cloth fuses sticking out the tops.

The two men found that many people here support the movement. Their boss at a service station paid for their ride in. When they needed warm gloves, the store owner here gave them a package of several pairs free, "for the people on the square," they were told.

Oleksandr Babushkin, 34, an anesthesiologist from a Kiev suburb, was one of the seven volunteer doctors on duty at a medical clinic in the lobby of the central post office building on the square.

Sitting on a table used for surgery, Babushkin glanced around the small lobby,that a day before was filled with wounded and dying protesters.

"In the first 15 minutes five dead bodies were brought in," he recalled. "I was shocked.

"We didn't have any equipment because no one was expecting this."

The clinic has since been stocked with drop counter stands and medicines. The station needs more laryngoscopes for intubations, Babushkin says. Just then a volunteer walks in with a laryngoscope that someone had donated. Twenty surgeons are on duty throughout the day and evening.

The clashes between police and protesters may seem chaotic but there is a division of labor, they say. Some of the protesters are assigned to self-defense squads that do the fighting.

"We were prepared for it long ago, we knew this was coming sooner or later," said 44-year old Ivan Shershin, member of a self-defense squad, as he sat near a tent with a cup of hot tea. "Our fighting training goes on every day for four hours, as it was before."

In the evening, thousands of protesters quieted as dozens of open coffins were carried through the crowd, one after another, slain comrades from the awful day before. People lifted their mobile phones with glowing screens and chanted, "Glory to the heroes!" Many cried.

In the middle of the funeral ceremony, it was announced that Yanukovych had flown to Kharkiv, a city in the east of Ukraine where the mayor and the governor and many voters support him.